Twitch publishes sales-boosting data research

Streaming site Twitch has called for game developers to invest in their broadcasting communities, claiming that anything up to 25 percent of lifetime sales for some titles can be tracked directly to streaming activity.

Danny Hernandez, data scientist at Amazon-owned live-streaming site Twitch, has published figures which point to a convincing link between streaming activity and sales, in particular for indie titles: according to Hernandez' research, around 25 percent of lifetime sales for Punch Club and The Culling are attributable directly to viewers watching gameplay streams then going out and purchasing the game themselves, and even triple-A titles like Tom Clancy's The Division have benefited from a near-20 percent sales boost from the same mechanism.

'I found that when a Steam-connected viewer watched a game on Twitch, their odds of purchasing the game within 24 hours went up substantially,' Hernandez explains, admitting that his sales attribution breakdown is based entirely upon this metric and therefore definitely open to interpretation. A tighter observation comes from the claim that 'mid-tier' broadcasters, whose streams see between 33 and 3,333 concurrent viewers, convert viewers into buyers at a rate some 13 times more effectively than high-viewership 'top tier' broadcasters - and that small broadcasters whose streams see fewer than 33 concurrent views convert at a rate some 1,000 times more higher. Player retention was also noted to be higher for Twitch viewers than other gamers.

'There is now strong public evidence that game creators should foster their Twitch community both pre- and post-launch in order to move units and retain players,' Hernandez concluded. 'This means building out your community by giving out early access, getting game design feedback from broadcasters, and considering a Stream First approach.'